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Posts Tagged ‘pest prevention’

Be gone, feline fouler!

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

sonic cat scarer 

The worst pest in our garden is slugs. Without question. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, up until 2 weekends ago, the worst pets was cats (i do like them when they aren’t pooing, we used to have two little men ourselves). I had plans to build huge cane frames to go over the beds, to cover them in enviromesh and to remove them when we were home. The purpose of this was going to be to keep the cat off the beds.

Every morning, after my cup of tea and toast i have a wander out back, only to usually find a new piece of dirt turned over and a pile of crusty turd.

Two weeks ago i bought a sonic cat scarer. It has a very high frequency that we can’t hear, but the cats can. When they walk across in front of it, it sets the alarm off, and the cats run away. I make sure i turn it off when i’m outside so not to waste the battery but every now and again i leave it on. I know i wouldn’t want to go to the loo in a garden with a shrill siren ringing in my ears!

The result is that we are able to keep the beds completely uncovered! No expensive covers and no poo!

(There was one mess last week, but i’ve found that if i move the ‘machine’ every couple of days it confuses the little blighters!)

It did cost £30 and i will need to replace the battery every now and again but that is a small price to pay for seedlings that are actually allowed to grow!

I’ve read lots on forums and in magazines and think this actually works!

 Now, to work on those slugs…more nematodes  think!

Go faster stripes!

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Go faster stripes, beds, carrots, garlic 

Go faster stripes! Well, not quite. As they are made of copper they also function as keeping the slugs and snails off of the beds. Apparently the pesky gits get an elctric shock as they go over the copper, and RETREAT! We’ve also watered in some nematodes, just to finish the job.

The garlic is growing nicely (more than i can say for the floppy onions) in the foreground, and the carrots in the beds equally so (the transplants will be ready to eat soon!) If the pesky carrot root fly doesn’t get them that is - although they shouldn’t be able to get over the pallet that i chopped up and installed as ‘extra protection!’